Garden Planning

     It may seem a little early for garden planning but I assure you it is not. Deciding what, were and when you are going to plant this spring is the key to getting the most out of your space. Particularly if you are new to growing vegetables or plan to try new varieties. It may also be useful to think about how much something costs in the grocery store verses how much space it takes up in your garden. Broccoli and cauliflower, for instance, are pretty cheap but take up a square foot or more. I could use that space for a more expensive or hard to find vegetables such as butter lettuce or fava beans. The Cheap Vegetable Gardener has a great article that you can find here on the profitability of plants. Of course you should grow whatever you are going to eat but it is something to think about when planning your garden.
     My planning starts with looking back and what  I grew last year and what seeds  I still have on hand. I plot out where I am going to put the seeds I already have and then decide what else I can squeeze in or just must have. This winter we have really gotten into eating spaghetti and butternut squash. And last year we impulsively bought three cucumber starters and relished in cucumber sandwiches all summer. I also like to balance what we plan to eat fresh and what will be canned or dried for the winter. Half our garden (roughly 40 square feet) is dedicated to tomatoes. Matt makes a variety of ketchup flavors and I make pasta sauce and salsa. We can jars upon jars of tomatoey goodness to have long after the last of the plants have died. So I also have to plant things like basil and onion to go with the tomatoes. But we also eat massive amounts of tomatoes fresh. Cherry tomatoes are particularly wonderful in salads or for snacking right there in the garden.
     Once I know what I am going to plant and where I can easily figure out how many seeds I need to start. Each package will tell you how many plants you can grow in a certain area. Now if you have a really small plot or are not sure about a certain type of vegetable you can always get starters. One starter can cost as much as a packet of 100 seeds but if you just want to try it out or are a little late in starting your garden then by all means, grab what the local nursery has, shove it in the ground and enjoy.
   
How to plan a garden:

     I start my garden planning by looking at what seeds I already have. Some seeds I saved from the plants the previous years and others are leftover that I didn't use. I've never used an entire packet of seeds in one year. There are just too many of any one thing in a packet. Here is a photo of what  I've got at the moment.

The beans in the the upper left hand corner area fava beans that I saved from last year. It is roughly two pods worth. I'm excited to see if I did it right and they grow this year. The beans on the right are red runner beans. I'm going to cook some but also plant some. Beans seem to be the easiest things to save so that is why I am experimenting with them first. I already have kale, onion, sugar snap peas, radishes, carrots, arugula, cucumber, three kinds of tomatoes, spinach and basil. I still need to get butter lettuce, strawberries, spaghetti squash and butternut squash seeds. Then my garden plan will be complete.

     I graphed out roughly what I want to plant where. Each square on the paper represents roughly 6 inches so two squares equal a foot. The big section on the left is the main side yard. We plan to make some kind of trellis for the cucumbers to grow on and the tomatoes also need something that helps hold them up. In the middle of that section you will see a blank. I left that there in case we had more tomatoes than I budgeted room for or if we decide to randomly plant beets or something. It's good to have a plan but it is also good to be flexible.
    The side yard is in full sun but the front plots are shadier. The plot on top of the page gets more sun than the one below it so I can plant two cherry tomato plants in that one along with fava beans, carrots and radishes. Cherry tomatoes get ripe faster than the big meat tomatoes so they can deal with a little less sun.

   
     The lower garden plot in the front is very shady because it is blocked by the front porch. But it is still a great place to grow leafy greens. A whole bed of kale, arugula, spinach and butter leaf lettuce will keep us well stocked with nutritious salads. I am particularly looking forward to cooking the fava beans with ground turkey and spices and then wrapping it up with butter leaf lettuce.
     If you refer back to the photo of the complete garden you will see the lower right hand corner has one little plot and then a note. We have a tiny strip by the house which is where we put the beans since they can then grow up the poles we lean against the house. There is also that little note to myself about clearing a space on the back wall for squash. Because squash are vine plants and like to grow and spread along the ground I thought it would be a good idea to plant them in the back and have them grow over the stone wall. There are just weeds back there now but it shouldn't take too long to clear out a little spot for them. Then they can go nuts and won't encroach on anything else's space.
     Next week I plan to plant the first of my starters. Until then get going on your garden planning!

Working on it

     I haven't been doing a lot of posts on This Ugly Old House Blog because I have been working a lot to get the money to do the remodeling to post about here. Isn't that always the way? Recently I took on a couple extra days of work so that we could put a new floor in the bathroom. Right now there are two types of flooring in there. The base layer is some pink linoleum like stuff that is glued down to the sub-flooring. I don't think we will be taking that off.

     The second/top layer is some crappy vinyl stuff that looks to be just thrown down in a hurry. They didn't even fix it down properly and is curling up all along one wall. It looks horrendous but I am even more scared of the pink below it!

     In the photo above you can see the vinyl at the bottom with the pink stuff to the right and where the pink stuff has broken off to the left there is the black adhesive. Pretty disgusting, right? The photo below is of the tile that I want or something similar to it.

     At $6.38 a sq ft the price comes out to roughly $245 and that includes taxes. Other supplies like adhesive and grout will be needed so I have budgeted $400 for the floor since we are doing the work ourselves. With a new floor we will also be putting in a new sink. I want a pedestal sink like this one: 

     This one from Lowe's runs $200 plus $50 to $100 for the faucets. I did see a vintage black pedestal sink at one of the reuse stores here in town which I think would look awesome. This is the sink we have now:

     Dated style and clunky looking. I think a nice pedestal sink will give the bathroom some class as well as make the space feel bigger. We plan to put storage cabinets to the right above the toilet so loosing the space below the sink won't be a problem. I also want a new medicine cabinet with more style as well as rip off that ugly wood paneling that is only on two small sections of the wall. Yuck!
     We have decided to go with a black and white for most everything so that nothing will clash. Then if we want a colorful curtain or towels things won't get too crazy. We are still in the planning phases and also want to have someone come and check the structural integrity of the floor to make sure it can handle the extra weight.
     With any home improvement project planning and making sure it is done right is key. We have been waiting over two years to do this project and I am more than ready to get started. I will keep you updated on our progress.

Budgets, Quotes and the Nitty Gritty of Home Repair

     When I was young I was not a planner. I was not very organized but I was spontaneous and fun. Although I still like to think that I am spontaneous and fun I have realized the value of being organized and thinking things through. Especially when it pertains to my house. With that in mind, this blog post is about the work you need to do before you take a sledge hammer to that wall you hate. The blight of unfinished home improvement projects can really take a toll on you.

Quotes
     I am not sure if I can stress enough the importance of getting a quote, if not multiple quotes. These are vital to your budgeting process and most places will do them for free. Think of it as a job interview. You are interviewing these people for the job of working on your house or providing you will a product. Interview multiple candidates. See who you like best and you think will do a good job. This person may be working inside your home for an extended period of time so you should at least feel comfortable having them around and they should treat you with respect and not be pushy or flaky.
     And if you have multiple quotes to choose from then you can see if the prices and duration of a project are all about the same or if some are much higher or lower than others. I would recommend three or four quotes so that you can get a good idea of the variability. Of course, if your house is flooding or some other imminent disaster is happening then have the first person you call fix it. That is not home improvement but disaster mitigation and you should have an emergency fund for that. But that is a whole other post.
     After you have your quotes then you can start working on your budget. Keep in mind that quotes are not just for labor. You also need to get quotes for home much materials cost which you plan to install yourself. Flooring, back splash tile, paint and whatnot along with tools you may need. For example, when we bought our lovely bamboo flooring we found out what the materials cost per square foot and figured that it would cost $1,000 for what we wanted. But when we went to purchase the materials we found out that there were vapor barriers, padding and glue that we also needed for installation which raised the total price to roughly $2,000. It was still a good price for what we got because we installed it ourselves and saved a lot on labor but there always seem to be hidden costs that you have to search out when getting quotes and putting a budget together.

Budget

     It may seem obvious but setting a budget and sticking to it is one of the most important things you can do when remodeling your home. Budgets are not glamorous or fun (unless you have a touch of OCD like me) however if you start a project without one then the costs can quickly spiral out of control and you will end up with only half a dream kitchen or going into debt. I recommend neither of these outcomes.
     Now, I am not saying that you have to allocate every penny but getting a general idea of what things cost. You can make a budget one of two ways. The first way is to figure out how much money you have to spend. Say you have $10,000 in savings to spruce up your kitchen. Your appliances are new but the floor is nasty and you could really use some new cabinetry. Knowing how much you have to spend and a rough idea of what you want to accomplish will allow you to get quotes for materials and possibly labor and see if they fit into your budget. Here is a special budget tip: Take 10-20% of your budget and put that aside. Do not allocate it towards anything but instead keep it handy incase some part of the process goes over budget. And if you don't spend it great! Money in the bank or at the very end (after everything else is close to being complete and not going over budget) you can splurge on whatever you were really hoping for.
     So here is an example rough budget of $10,000.

$1,000  This is the 10% that we set aside before doing anything else
$2,000  Fixing/removing existing flooring so that new flooring can be installed.
$2,000  Cost of new flooring. Installation will be done by homeowner
$5,000  Cost of new cabinetry and counter top. Homeowner does installation.

$9,000  Total cost budgeted for with $1,000 remaining for overages or last minute additions.

     So that is one way to set your budget. For most home owners I think this is the way to go because you know ahead of time how much money you have so you don't go crazy. Besides, most of us already know how much we have to spend on a project. But let's say you are doing to get a loan and don't know how much you need to ask for. That is when you would use this second method of budgeting. In the second method you find what you like, get quotes for it, add it all up, add 10-20% for overages and then you have the amount you should ask for. A bathroom remodeling budget could look something like this:

$1,000  new tile floor
$500     new tile around bath/shower area
$200     new low flow toilet
$100     eco friendly showerhead
$300     vanity
$300     sink and faucets
$200     medicine cabinet
$50       paint
$50       shower curtain
$2,700  total plus 10% overrage
$2,970 or roughly $3,000 total for a bathroom remodel. 

     I totally just pulled these numbers out of thin air to demonstrate how a budget might go. I feel that if the sky is the limit then you will easily reach the sky and then head for the stars so unless money is no object I think budgeting option number one is best for most people. And remember that things can be done in stages. Start from the ground up with new flooring and wait on replacing upper cabinets. Particularly when you are doing the work yourself breaking a big project into a number of smaller projects can be very helpful.
     Have you recently budgeted or gotten quotes for a home improvement project? Tell us how it when in the comment section.